Paramount, "humbled" by last month's SOPA defeat, wants to visit college …

Major Hollywood studios are still reeling from last month's resounding defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act. The latest sign of the studios's changed posture is a letter that Paramount Pictures has sent to a number of professors around the country seeking an opportunity to discuss the challenges of fighting online copyright infringement on campus.

"We at Paramount have been humbled by the strong public opposition to the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation," wrote Paramount's Alfred Perry in a letter dated February 2 and obtained by infojustice.org. "The extent of the negative reaction surprised us."

Perry wanted to "exchange ideas about content theft, its challenges, and possible ways to address it. As these last few weeks made painfully clear, we still have much to learn. We would love to come to campus and do exactly that."

Perry asked to come to campus and "give a formal presentation followed by an open discussion period." He said he would also be happy to "join for a session of an existing course or seminar."

If Paramount wants to learn from and dialogue with its critics, more power to the company and its executives. But that attitude doesn't seem to go all the way to the top of the corporate ladder. Philippe Dauman, CEO of Paramount's parent company Viacom, last week lashed out at the "mob mentality" that killed the Senate's PROTECT IP Act. (We recently covered Dauman's record-breaking $50 million pay raise for 2010.)

"It became almost religious dogma that any legislation that might emerge through the process built around the Senate bill would have broken the Internet, created censorship around the world," he said at last week's D:Dive into Media conference. "The fact of the matter is I think the bill that would have emerged would have been very reasonable."

Media and technology companies, he said, "should be working together. If you have a legitimate argument with a particular provision, it should be discussed rationally and then you get legislation."

Of course, "working together" is relative. Both SOPA and PIPA began life as tough bills catering almost exclusively to major rightsholders, rather than emerging from some kind of stakeholder dialogue. And Dauman's allies in the recording industry have shown little interest in improving the OPEN Act, an alternative to SOPA that gives accused website operators greater due process rights. Last week the Recording Industry Association of America called for the legislation to be scrapped rather than amended.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.